Leveson Inquiry – Wanted- people who have had their evidence ignored

The Leveson Inquiry are refusing to use my evidence of press, PCC and police misdoing. They will not even take up the matter of Piers Morgan’s perjury before them despite the fact that I have given them a letter from Morgan to the PCC in which he writes “ The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect) gave us the detail of the letters that we then published.” (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/piers-morgan-lied-to-the-leveson-inquiry/) . My latest exchange of emails with the Inquiry is below.

I am in contact with a published author who intends to expose such behaviour by the Leveson Inquiry. He would like to hear from anyone else who has submitted evidence to the Inquiry and believes that it has been excluded for illegitimate reasons, for example, because it would cause political embarrassment or require criminal proceedings to be taken against those with power, wealth or influence.

Anyone who wishes to expose such refusals should email me on anywhere156@gmail.com and I will forward them to the writer.

I write to confirm that your submissions are currently being considered by the Inquiry. In relation to the letter from Mr Morgan, I would be grateful if you would confirm if you have a signed copy, and if so, please send a signed hard copy to the Inquiry.

At this stage, we do not require a formal statement from you.

In relation to your final question, re how and when to make a complaint to the Metropolitan Police, I understand that you spoke to Ms Brudenell yesterday and she advised you that you may make a complaint to the Police, if you wish.

Kind regards

Sharron Hiles

————————————Miss Sharon Hiles, Asst. solicitor to the InquiryLeveson Inquiry Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC115 February 2012

Dear Miss Hiles,

I supplied the Inquiry with a photstat of the copy of Morgan’s letter on 28 November –see copy covering letter below. The letter and enclosures were sent by recorded delivery. I am most concerned that you do not appear to have this in the file with the submissions I have made. Please re-check your records and let me know whether you have my letter of 28 November and all the enclosures listed in it. If not I will supply you with duplicates in person.

The copy of Morgan’s letter I sent to the Inquiry is written on the Mirror letterhead and has the PCC stamp on it showing they received the letter 20/10/1997. Morgan has not signed it but it was pp’ed, presumably by his secretary or PA. I cannot decipher the name of the person who pp’ed the letter, but the fact that it is on Mirror letter-headed paper and has been treated by the PCC as being from Morgan removes any doubt that it was from him.

As for my conversation with Miss Brundenell on 14 February, we agreed that I would not make a complaint to the police about Morgan until I have received written answers to the questions I raised in my email to her of 27 January. In case you do not have this I enclose a copy.

Please reply by return.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

————————————

Leveson Inquiry

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC1

28 November 2011

Dear Lord Leveson,

As promised in my email of 25 November (hard copy enclosed) , I send you hard copies of the following documents:

Having considered the letter and Mr Morgan’s evidence to the Inquiry, we do not propose to take this matter any further. The relevant part of the transcript relates to questions regarding payments to police. This is not the same issue as a newspaper receiving information for which no payment had been made. It is a matter for you whether you wish to refer your concerns to the Metropolitan Police.

I can also confirm that in this regard the Inquiry do not require a formal statement from you. We have the other submissions you have sent, however, if you wish to submit anything further regarding press intrusion, as the Chairman suggested you could when you applied to be a Core Participant, you may do so. This will be considered by the Inquiry although you may not necessarily be called to give evidence.

Yours sincerely

Sharron Hiles

————————————

Miss Sharon Hiles,

Asst. solicitor to the Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC1

15 February 2012

Dear Miss Hiles,

Your latest email is decidedly odd from beginning to end. To start with the obvious , why should you assume that the Mirror did not pay for the information? Morgan does not mention payment but it does not follow from that there was no payment. In fact, by far the most likely explanation for the provision of the information to the Mirror is payment by the Mirror to the police officer. Why have you assumed the police officer was not paid? Give me a plausible reason why a policeman would without payment supply such information .

The other thing which makes no sense in your last email is context. Even if you did not have the copy of Morgan’s letter in your file containing my submissions, you had the text of Morgan’s letter before you sent your previous email asking me whether I had a signed copy of the letter. Consequently, it makes no sense for you to now abruptly tell me that the Inquiry will not proceed because “This is not the same issue as a newspaper receiving information for which no payment had been made. “ If you honestly believed that you would not have asked me whether I had a copy of Morgan’s letter with a signature because it would be an irrelevance.

You are also objectively wrong when you claim that if no payment was made the matter does not fall within the Inquiry’s remit. Let me remind you of what the Leveson Inquiry website gives as part of the remit:

•Module 1: The relationship between the press and the public and looks at phone-hacking and other potentially illegal behaviour.

•Module 2: The relationships between the press and police and the extent to which that has operated in the public interest.

Even in the exceptionally unlikely event of no money changing hands, the recipient of the information and the police officer would have committed an offence under the Official Secrets Act. (The initial recipient was the Mirror’s chief crime writer Jeff Edwards; someone I suspect may well appear before the Inquiry at some point). It was also a breach of the Data Protection Act.

There is also another side to this matter. The police were supposed to investigate the Mirror admission of receiving information illegally but failed to meaningfully do so as they concluded their “investigation” without interviewing anyone at the Mirror, the details of this non-investigation I have already supplied to the Inquiry. That is a prima facie case of perverting the course of justice.

Finally, the consequences of the supply of the information and the Mirror’s use of it was severe because I suffered more than a decade of harassment, the details of which I have already supplied to the Inquiry.

All of that puts the matter firmly within the remit of both module 1 and 2. That removes your stated reason for not proceeding with the matter. If you have another ground for refusing to use the information please let me know ASAP.

You have ignored the request in my previous email for you to confirm that the material I supplied on 28 November by recorded delivery is in your possession. Please let me know whether you have found these documents.

Why have you behaved in this way? Here is a scenario for you. Either you or your superior decided the best way to avoid taking action on the clear evidence of the Mirror receiving information corruptly from the police and Morgan’s subsequent perjury was to cast doubt on the authenticity of Morgan’s letter by raising the question of whether his signature is on it. When you received my email telling you that I had already supplied a copy of the Morgan’s letter to the Inquiry, you either found the copy I sent in November or you accepted that the details of the letter I supplied made it impossible to go down the authenticity of the letter route. That prompted the strikingly sudden – only hours before you were ostensibly giving every indication that the material would be used – and woefully feeble excuse that because you assumed no money was paid – an assumption best described as irrational based on the circumstances- the matter was outside of the remit of the Inquiry. In short, the story being told is incoherent and fractured. As a one-time Inland Revenue investigator, that behaviour strikes me as the product of panic. Who made the decision not to proceed?

The best way of testing behaviour is always to ask how would it appear to a disinterested audience. You and your colleagues need to ask yourself how your failure to use then potent information I have supplied – not just the Morgan letter but the serious misbehaviour of the press, the PCC and the police which involved me directly – would appear to the general public. I think it a fair bet that most people without a vested interest would conclude that the Inquiry has refused to use the evidence for reasons other than its relevance and that the most likely reason would be the involvement of powerful people, most notably the Blairs.

If the Inquiry does not use the information I have provided, I shall make that failure a very public matter indeed by using the multiplicity of web-based media now available.

I can confirm that I do have a copy of your letter of 28 November and enclosures. I can also advise that the legal team to the Inquiry made the decision not to take this matter any further.

Kind regards

Sharron Hiles

—————————————————-

Miss Kim Brudenell

Solicitor to the Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC1

18 February 2012

Dear Miss Brudenell,

Please answer these questions:

1. Who had ultimate responsibility for making the decision not to investigate Piers Morgan’s admission to the PCC of the Mirror’s illicit receipt of information from the police? I want a name not an obfuscating answer such as “the legal team to the Inquiry “. Where there is a hierarchy, as there is within the Inquiry, the decision is not made by a group but the person in charge.

2. Who had ultimate responsibility for deciding to ignore Morgan’s perjury before the Inquiry? Again I want a name.

3. Did Lord Leveson see the Pier’s Morgan’s letter to the PCC before the decision to act upon my evidence was made?

4. Has Lord Leveson had sight of any of the evidence I have submitted to the Inquiry?

5. If Lord Leveson has had sight of any of the evidence I have submitted to the Inquiry, when did this happen?

6. Sharron Hiles confirmed in her last email to me (16 February) that the Inquiry has received the original documents , including the Piers Morgan’s letter to the PCC on the Mirror letterhead , which I sent on 28 November . At what date and time were these found by those reviewing my evidence to the Inquiry?

7. What was the basis for Sharron Hiles claiming categorically that the Mirror had not paid for the information?

8. If the Inquiry believes that the Mirror did not pay for the information, what motive or motives does the Inquiry believe could have led a police officer to risk his career and criminal prosecution for no reward?

9. Regardless of whether the Mirror paid for the information, the illicit receipt of information from the police – both the police officer and the Mirror employees involved in receiving and using it committed serious criminal offences under the Data Protection and Official Secrets Acts – the misbehaviour falls indubitably within the remit of both modules I and 2 of the Inquiry. It is also very serious misbehaviour. That being so, why did the Inquiry refuse to proceed with the matter?

10. Miss Hiles’ first email to me on the 15 February was sent at 13.02 pm . In it she writes “I would be grateful if you would confirm if you have a signed copy, and if so, please send a signed hard copy to the Inquiry”. That clearly implied that Piers Morgan’s admission and perjury was being taken seriously and that the only serious stumbling block might be the absence of proof that Morgan was responsible for the letter. By the time Miss Hiles second email of the day was sent at 17. 40 pm the question of whether I had a signed copy vanishes. Why did it become suddenly unimportant in the In the 4 hours 38 minutes between the two emails?

You can of course refuse to answer these questions either in part or at all, Miss Brudenell, but as an experienced solicitor I am sure you are aware that a refusal to answer questions in circumstances where it is entirely reasonable to have them answered can be damning is evidence of itself. Indeed, that is what the revised caution is based upon.

I appreciate that you have long standing concerns regarding Mr Morgan. The Inquiry’s position was made clear in our emails of 15 and 16 February and I have nothing to add to that. If, however, the position changes and the Inquiry does require a statement from you, we will let you know.

Yours sincerely

Kim Brudenell

Solicitor to the Leveson Inquiry

———————————————

Miss Kim Brudenell

Solicitor to the Inquiry

Leveson Inquiry

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand

London WC1

29 February 2012

Dear Miss Brudenell,

As I pointed out in my last email a failure to answer reasonable questions is evidence against the refuser. Your blanket refusal speaks volumes.

I am going to send more information which is every bit as strong as that which I have supplied. If you refuse to use that evidence and call me as a witness the dishonesty of the Inquiry process will become ever more obvious and extreme.

For the moment I shall content myself with sending some immediately pertinent information . This involves the failure of the Metropolitan Police to investigate Rebecca Brooks (then Wade) after she had admitted to a select committee that the police had been paid for information while she was a News International editor. (I was at the hearing when she made the admission)

I also include letters to the MP Chris Bryant who asked the question of Brooks/Wade which elicited her admission of payments to the police. Bryant did nothing to get a prosecution started. You will also see that my letters to the Metropolitan Police were copied to each member of the DCMS. Neither individually nor as a committee did they act to see an investigation of Brooks/Wade was begun. All of this speaks to the unhealthy relationship between MPs and the Murdoch press and probably the relationship between politicians and the media generally.

Two other things. I wish to make applications for information under the Data Protection Act (DPA) and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

I make a formal subject access request under the DPA for all information you hold on me. Under the 1998 Act that means not only the information held in digital form but any other data held in a searchable filing system. That can be as simple as a folder holding documents marked with a name, number or other signifier. The information you supply to me should include copies of any data I have sent to the Inquiry. You have 40 calendar days from today to supply the information or give reasons for refusing to do so.

As for the FOIA, please inform me whether the Inquiry comes within remit of the Act. If you claim it does not please give your reasons.

Comments

I asked the Leveson Inquiry to look into the fact that the journalist Graeme McLagan had written in his book ‘Bent Coppers’ that someone had left him a black bin liner full of secret police documents relating to a registered police informant and an ongoing police inquiry (Operation Ethiopia). This has never been investigated by the police despite McLagan publishing in his book that he thanked the source of these documents.

McLagan mentions the fact that he was provided with nearly 500 informant contact sheets relating to an informant called Michael Michaels. Surely that would have been of some concern to Mr Michaels’ police handler Det Ch Supt Brian Moore, who is now the new leader of the UK Border Agency.

And surely this black bin liner full of secret police documents which have landed in the lap of a journalist would have been of some concern to the officer leading the ongoing police inquiry that the documents allegedly also related to (Operation Ethiopia). Oh wait, that’s Brian Moore again and he’s an Untouchable.

Trackbacks

[…] I have asked the Inquiry for an explanation of (1) how they reached their conclusion that the Mirror did not pay for the information; (2) why they asked for a facsimile of Morgan’s original letter if they believed the Mirror did not pay for the information – the Inquiry definitely had the wording of the letter when Hiles’ first email was sent and if their objection was that Morgan did not explicitly state the Mirror had paid for the information, there was no point in asking me whether I had a signed copy of it and (3) why they are refusing to investigate the breaches of the OSA and DPA. I have received no reply. The full exchange of emails between the Inquiry and myself from 15 February onwards can be found at https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/leveson-inquiry-wanted-people-who-have-had-their-e…. […]

[…] I have asked the Inquiry for an explanation of (1) how they reached their conclusion that the Mirror did not pay for the information; (2) why they asked for a facsimile of Morgan’s original letter if they believed the Mirror did not pay for the information – the Inquiry definitely had the wording of the letter when Hiles’ first email was sent and if their objection was that Morgan did not explicitly state the Mirror had paid for the information, there was no point in asking me whether I had a signed copy of it and (3) why they are refusing to investigate the breaches of the OSA and DPA. I have received no reply. The full exchange of emails between the Inquiry and myself from 15 February onwards can be found at https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/leveson-inquiry-wanted-people-who-have-had-their-e…. […]